The Perfect Night Out: GQ's 25 Most Outstanding Restaurants of 2015

That's right, we're going bigger and better, more than doubling our annual list of the best new places to stuff your face right this moment. Why? Because the rate at which boundary-vaulting chefs are launching paradigm-busting restaurants (and chef-led Thai joints and reformed sushi-Nazi counters and trattorias full of magic tricks) in the past year has grown even faster than our waistlines. And because these days going out to eat is synonymous with going out, period. Here's our game plan for twenty-five nights. The other 340 are up to you

I stood stoically in line for an hour and forty minutes as the rains came, the wind blew, the night fell. At Rose's Luxury, reservations aren't taken, waits are interminable, and suffering is standard. You won't mind. It's everything inside I didn't expect from standing outside, much like one of those tiny churches in Venice where all the grandeur is within.

The narrow white-painted brick exterior hid comfortable bare-wood tables, patient waiters, and such culinary wonders as the greatest and probably most massive veal parmigiana ever made, crunchy under a slathering of red sauce and cheese. It's official: Rose's has wrested the veal parm championship from New York's Carbone. From the tiny wine list, I drank the greatest Muscadet of my life. (Don't ask. It's gone.) Beef crudo was like no other, a beaming red beacon for carnivores. The bread was warm challah, with butter and honey, which I took as a suggestion to pray over chef Aaron Silverman's masterful food. Fair enough. The cooking is beautifully conceived, playfully amplified, the essence of what modern, casual dining should be.

I've rarely felt so at home on a visit to a restaurant where I sat at a counter in front of two chefs I could barely understand. Langbaan—the name is Thai for “back of the house”—offers a tasting menu in the rear of a larger restaurant, access obtained by yanking on the handle of a meat-grinding machine attached to a supposedly secret door. Such shenanigans usually lead to pretentiousness, but not here.

Langbaan is welcoming and generous, the food homey and gentle. Only the recipes are complicated, like the handwoven egg net enclosing pork, peanuts, and much more. (There's always much more with Thai.) Live scallop sitting in a crispy cup made from coconut milk and rice flour was so sumptuous I wondered if it was intended to pass for dessert, and the salads contained tuna ceviche or marinated pork jowl—my kind of greens. This is the first Thai food I've ever eaten that made me wish I lived over there.

Don't make the mistake of thinking you've been here before. The name's the same, but the location is new and so is most of the food. The original Momofuku Ko was overtaken by Chef's Table at Brooklyn Fare as the American champion of counter-style fine dining. Now chef David Chang (yes, the guy who writes for GQ) is battling back. After ten small dishes, I thought I had the place figured out: The new Ko was Chang's take on Japanese, with dishes such as madai tartare with chile, shiso, and Australian finger lime.

Then I realized I was wrong. Out came scrambled eggs with potatoes and caviar. Lobster in a foamy bisque-like broth. Uni with chickpea puree, Japan meets Israel. Petits fours, classically French. The wine list is fascinating and well-priced. The meal is a little less reasonable at $175, but you get twenty or so courses, and GQ isn't paying Chang nearly enough to finance this stunning wrapped-in-glass space. His first spot, Momofuku Noodle Bar, cost less than $200,000. I asked him how much went into the new Ko, and he replied, grimacing, “I'm not going to tell you.”

Fabio Trabocchi has found his restaurant. He's already famous, has been for a while, but after suffering for a few years in New York, he returned to D.C. to open a few nice places. Now comes the fabulous Fiola Mare, a grand Italian seafood restaurant that's situated on the Potomac but sings of the Riviera. It's about the kind of classic, ambitious dining rarely found anymore.

Trabocchi has always been partial to lavishness, and here he lets loose. His pastas are rich—in particular, a lobster ravioli that's mostly lobster in a ginger-butter sauce. Tuna tartare is unexpectedly juicy: a mingling of fish, tomatoes, capers, and Meyer lemon. Under the Sea is a bowl of Parmesan-rind-accented dashi laden with scallops and cod sausage. Desserts are gorgeous: The dark-chocolate terrine wears candied mint leaves and pistachio dabs that resemble Hershey's Kisses. In an era when dining out can feel like work—the research, the reservations, the waiting—Fiola Mare sweeps you away and reminds you that a meal can still be magical.

Pax Americana is a throwback to a vanishing time when young chefs were discovered in their kitchens, not on television. You eat here for two reasons: to taste Adam Dorris's somewhat American—but distinctively personal—cooking and to see the glowing painting of Chairman Mao by Andy Warhol on the dining-room wall. (In Texas, restaurant owners can afford such eye candy.) Dorris cooks with exuberance, intelligence, and complexity: juicy local swordfish, sliced thick; creamy goat ricotta with soft, soft slices of acorn squash; eggs in a skillet with greens, Thai chiles, and scallion-kimchi aioli; beef tartare like no other—brined and smoked, chewy and dense. At a time when money-controlling partners tend to meddle in the kitchen, it's rare—and worth celebrating—when promising chefs wield so much freedom.

It calls itself an “eatery,” hardly a promising descriptor. It's tucked into the far reaches of a vast hotel, ridiculously difficult to find if you enter through the lobby. Yet there are culinary powerhouses behind this seemingly obscure spot. The proprietor, Pim Techamuanvivit, says she can cook every dish on the menu just as well as her kitchen staff but has no idea how to do so in a restaurant. So she brought on Michael Gaines—former sous-chef at Manresa, the legendary restaurant of David Kinch—to run the kitchen. Kin Khao is lively, crowded with happy customers who know they are getting some of the most complex and satisfying Thai food in America. All three curries I tried (green, massaman, sour) exploded from their bowls. Chicken wings, the favorite Thai food of Americans, are marinated, cooked to order, and still crisp when they arrive enveloped in a tamarind-Sriracha glaze. There's one dessert, black-rice pudding, served with three condiments: one sweet, one salty, one crunchy. Whichever you select will tell you more about yourself than your horoscope.

The subtle world of sushi evolves in profoundly tiny ways. At Shuko, the rice is a little less obvious, the fish a little more blissful, the toppings sometimes nonexistent, sometimes sensational. Raw scallop with yuzu salt seared my mouth, making me happy in a way no sushi has before. A friend and I had maitake-mushroom tempura over rice, a short time later spicy maitake mushrooms over tempura-like crispy rice. It was Japanese food that made me grin. Shuko is mostly about Nick Kim and Jimmy Lau, partners and alumni of New York's Masa empire, which means the sushi never slips into silly, so often the case when sushi bars innovate. Here's another sushi-bar rarity: charm. When I clumsily dropped my chopsticks, my friend groused, “Your chopstick skills are not good.” Kim overheard and chimed in, “Mine, neither.”

The room might well be a shotgun apartment: front door leading to a tiny area (seating twenty) leading straight back to an undersized kitchen. There's not much decor, save for a few black iron sconces and hanging lamps. The chairs are exceedingly comfy, the service attentive, the stemware pleasing—all enhancements to a BYOB dining experience with a style of cooking I loved back when it was called “modern French.” Yet the most stunning dish was pure Americana, catfish in a coconut-clam broth. Hard to imagine a kitchen in Philly accomplishing what the South has been trying to do for centuries: make catfish elegant. Chef Nicholas Elmi does it gracefully. His meat dishes are intensely flavorful, particularly duck magret and foie gras. Stylishness has come to East Passyunk Avenue, once ground zero for cheesesteaks, now fast emerging as Philly's premier dining locale.

Chef Zach Pollack has turned Italian food inside out. His take on tortellini en brodo—in Italy, that's ring-shaped pasta in soup—actually puts the soup inside the pasta. (Particularly appealing to Shanghai-soup-dumpling lovers like me.) And that's just the start of the innovations at this tiny spot in the Silver Lake section of L.A. Pollack does a version of vitello tonnato with veal tongue instead of loin; cubes of escolar with eggplant puree, almonds, and toasted breadcrumbs; escarole that could pass for a vegetable terrine; and a triumphant yellowtail collar, with his version lightly smoked, then grilled, and finally glazed in a sweet-and-sour sauce. The vividness of his flavors is very Italian, as is the simplicity of the space: small tables, globe lights. There's one very telling old-Italian touch: The restaurant manager and the sous-chef live together on the second floor, directly above the joint.

I couldn't decide: Was Ronnie Killen's plate rib merely the single greatest piece of barbecue of my entire life, or was it the most magnificent piece of beef ever cooked at any time in history? The plate rib is the Mona Lisa of meat, resembling an abnormally thick slab of prime rib attached to a bone the size and shape of a broadsword. The meat tasted something like slow-cooked brisket, the fat within deliriously caramelized. Don't confuse this massive mound of meat with the more mortal but quite tasty chuck rib, served on a combo plate with two sides. (Pork-laced pinto beans and crunchy creamed corn are the undeniable choices.)

I used to worry that Texas barbecue was in decline, the great old pit masters long gone, but it's suddenly better than ever. The new guys are behaving like chefs, sourcing better products and doing more than just sitting in folding chairs by the smoker all day, drinking beer. Everything is first-rate at Killen's. Don't miss the bone-on pork belly—pile the meat on soft white bread and top with coleslaw. And come early, before the place opens, when the beer is free.

Two huge murals depicting octopi dominate an otherwise plain oom—an homage from co-chefs Angus Brown and Nhan Le to the locally beloved Octopus Bar, where they became famous. They can't shake the attachment: The name Lusca refers to an imaginary octopus-like Caribbean sea monster. Fortunately, the whimsy doesn't carry over to the stunningly sophisticated cooking. Try the massive tortellini en brodo, and consider that this might be the year of tortellini. (See Alimento, above.) Stuffed with finely ground charcuterie trimmings and served in a reduced chicken broth, they're so rich you might wonder if you can handle more than one. Then order the pumpkin swordfish and the hand-torn potatoes—spuds are baked in a salt crust, cooled, dried, shredded, deep-fried, and topped with Parmesan and parsley. They deserve a wall painting of their own.

Except for the name, which means “from the two” in Italian and is way too deep for me, Dai Due is easy to understand: You walk in, you're facing a butcher counter, you wisely order meat. The pork rib chop, routinely commercial elsewhere, comes out nearly black, deeply porky, and as satisfying as a beefsteak. The six-ounce sirloin tip, reserved for women on Tuesdays (a.k.a. ladies' steak night) is everything a thrifty fellow could want—treat your gal to a steak dinner for ten bucks. Much credit belongs to the wood-fired grill, where local

oak sends out tendrils of smoke that envelop everything, including the cooks. The wine is all Texas, a potential problem—but not the tasty Aglianico from Duchman Winery in Driftwood. The best starter is the cold-meat board, which isn't standard Italian-style cold cuts but all manner of country and Germanic provisions, including bierwurst, pork-jowl terrine, and sprouted rye. Never forget that it was German butchers who culinarily settled the American West.

Ataula calls itself a tapas bar, but don't expect standard small bites. Chef Jose Chesa's dishes are inventive, skilled, and gorgeously composed, starting with his chorizo lollipop. Rossejat is something like paella but made with tiny toasted noodles instead of rice, and his Catalan-custard-filled mini-xuixos taste uncannily like Cronuts.

The food is sort of Spanish, but I've never come upon a Spanish chef who cooked with the intensity of Perfecto Rocher. Grilled spring onions with romesco-like sauce. Smoked, grilled octopus over vinegary potatoes. And chocolate-caramel rice pudding that's deep and devastating. The space conjures up a different name: loud.dark.cramped. But the food is certainly something else: savory.original.startling.

Carbone is satirical. Dirty French is retro. Santina, the newest restaurant from Major Food Group, led by Mario Carbone and Rich Torrisi, is giddy. Its extravagant chandeliers, bouncy music, exquisite cocktails, and multi-hued cannoli take you to an Italian island where the party never stops. The wines are irresistibly priced, the blue crab is artfully entwined with pasta, and the chickpea pancakes are the bar food of the century.

Chef Asha Gomez is highly respected. Self-service food is not. Here they meet in an informal, expansive, serene Indian dining spot. Gomez's accents are brilliant: fruit salad with coriander vinaigrette, vegetable stew in coconut-milk broth. But the star of the self-service line is the Kerala Beef Cutlet: It looks like a burger, tastes like meat loaf, acts like a barbecue sandwich, and proves that ready-to-eat is now easy to admire.

MFK looks like the sort of neighborhood bar where Jony Ive would hang out: pale, composed, and seafood-oriented, with a wine list offering few reds. “We're more of a white-wine place,” the bartender said. The small kitchen turns out beautifully prepared food at a breakneck pace, so don't expect to linger. Try the meatballs—too juicy to resist—and hang in long enough to sample the buttery, classic, profoundly simple Basque cake, itself as pale as the walls.

Here you'll find goodies galore, assuming you can find the place at all, located on an access road adjoining a major highway. (“We're in a really weird location,” the counter lady admitted.) The pastries are creative, compelling, and cost almost nothing: The bialy is warm and poufy, the flaky hand pie is stuffed with sausage and wild mushrooms, and the biscuit has mozzarella and bacon jam inside. Thank God for Google Maps.

Remember the Cold War? Maybe not. You were probably in elementary school. Well, it's back, as the backdrop of this delightfully dark spot. Laugh away international tensions with zakuski (Russian snacks) and sixty different vodkas. Try the Herring Under a Fur Coat, a kind of savory parfait salad, and Siberian pelmeni, which are like dumplings, but, well, Russian. Then toast Uncle Joe—Stalin, of course.

Plenty of Indian restaurants aspire to elegance, but few pull it off as Ananda does, with its working fireplaces, dark wood paneling, oversize tables, and massive windows. You'll also find faultless simplicity if you order the bengan khas. It's essentially Indian pizza, made by spreading eggplant, tomato, and yogurt over garlic naan. Crab Malabar, a celebrated Indian dish, has never been so subtle. Credit goes to the use of colossal lump crab, equally celebrated in these parts.

Trove is two restaurants and a bar under one roof, plus a semi-outdoor frozen-custard stand. (Even if it's raining, which it always is, don't skip the stand.) Trove's noodle section is so noodle-centric, I found some in my Mexican posole. The grill-it-yourself section had mostly chewy meats, surely because I cooked them. Even I couldn't make the Wagyu tri-tip tough.

Seated at a table, I ordered clams with chorizo and tongue with persimmons. Fantastic. Then I requested nigiri à la carte. The response: No sushi for you. Pink Zebra is a cute place with an annoying rule: No omakase reservation, no sushi—even if the tiny counter is empty. I argued. I won. I loved every bite. And the rule has since been relad. I had overcome the sushi-Nazi policy of Pink Zebra, my culinary triumph of the year.

Come here for a little history and a lot of meat. Lo Spiedo is located just inside the old navy yard, where the battleship New Jersey was built. Almost as sturdy is the reginette bolognese. “Too much meat,” I griped. “Marc Vetri knows what he's doing,” argued a friend. He always does. Here you'll find glorified Americanized Italian food, including a gutsy celery-root milanese sandwich. If vegetarians gave out medals, it deserves the Navy Cross.

Sadly, dim sum tends to be the same everywhere: unchanging versions of shu mai and har gow roll by on carts. Terrible tea. Indifferent service. Shi Hai is way better: attentive staff. Choice of teas. Six kinds of slippery rice-noodle rolls, including one stuffed with barbecued pork and corn. It's not a Great Leap Forward, just fantastic small steps.

I've rarely felt so at home on a visit to a restaurant where I sat at a counter in front of two chefs I could barely understand. Langbaan—the name is Thai for “back of the house”—offers a tasting menu in the rear of a larger restaurant, access obtained by yanking on the handle of a meat-grinding machine attached to a supposedly secret door. Such shenanigans usually lead to pretentiousness, but not here.

Langbaan is welcoming and generous, the food homey and gentle. Only the recipes are complicated, like the handwoven egg net enclosing pork, peanuts, and much more. (There's always much more with Thai.) Live scallop sitting in a crispy cup made from coconut milk and rice flour was so sumptuous I wondered if it was intended to pass for dessert, and the salads contained tuna ceviche or marinated pork jowl—my kind of greens. This is the first Thai food I've ever eaten that made me wish I lived over there.

Photo: Melissa Hom

3. Momofuku Ko | N.Y.C.

_David Chang's laboratory, part 2: The legend reborn

Don't make the mistake of thinking you've been here before. The name's the same, but the location is new and so is most of the food. The original Momofuku Ko was overtaken by Chef's Table at Brooklyn Fare as the American champion of counter-style fine dining. Now chef David Chang (yes, the guy who writes for GQ) is battling back. After ten small dishes, I thought I had the place figured out: The new Ko was Chang's take on Japanese, with dishes such as madai tartare with chile, shiso, and Australian finger lime.

Then I realized I was wrong. Out came scrambled eggs with potatoes and caviar. Lobster in a foamy bisque-like broth. Uni with chickpea puree, Japan meets Israel. Petits fours, classically French. The wine list is fascinating and well-priced. The meal is a little less reasonable at $175, but you get twenty or so courses, and GQ isn't paying Chang nearly enough to finance this stunning wrapped-in-glass space. His first spot, Momofuku Noodle Bar, cost less than $200,000. I asked him how much went into the new Ko, and he replied, grimacing, “I'm not going to tell you.”

Photo: Scott Suchman/ The Washington Post/ Getty

4. Fiola Mare | WASHINGTON, D.C.

New heights in #TREATYOSELF dining

Fabio Trabocchi has found his restaurant. He's already famous, has been for a while, but after suffering for a few years in New York, he returned to D.C. to open a few nice places. Now comes the fabulous Fiola Mare, a grand Italian seafood restaurant that's situated on the Potomac but sings of the Riviera. It's about the kind of classic, ambitious dining rarely found anymore.

Trabocchi has always been partial to lavishness, and here he lets loose. His pastas are rich—in particular, a lobster ravioli that's mostly lobster in a ginger-butter sauce. Tuna tartare is unexpectedly juicy: a mingling of fish, tomatoes, capers, and Meyer lemon. Under the Sea is a bowl of Parmesan-rind-accented dashi laden with scallops and cod sausage. Desserts are gorgeous: The dark-chocolate terrine wears candied mint leaves and pistachio dabs that resemble Hershey's Kisses. In an era when dining out can feel like work—the research, the reservations, the waiting—Fiola Mare sweeps you away and reminds you that a meal can still be magical.

Photo: Courtesy of Pax Americana

**5. Pax Americana | **HOUSTON

A real top chef, not a Top Chef™

Pax Americana is a throwback to a vanishing time when young chefs were discovered in their kitchens, not on television. You eat here for two reasons: to taste Adam Dorris's somewhat American—but distinctively personal—cooking and to see the glowing painting of Chairman Mao by Andy Warhol on the dining-room wall. (In Texas, restaurant owners can afford such eye candy.) Dorris cooks with exuberance, intelligence, and complexity: juicy local swordfish, sliced thick; creamy goat ricotta with soft, soft slices of acorn squash; eggs in a skillet with greens, Thai chiles, and scallion-kimchi aioli; beef tartare like no other—brined and smoked, chewy and dense. At a time when money-controlling partners tend to meddle in the kitchen, it's rare—and worth celebrating—when promising chefs wield so much freedom.

Photo: Eric Wolfinge

**6. Kin Khao | **SAN FRANCISCO

Hidden Thai with a high polish

It calls itself an “eatery,” hardly a promising descriptor. It's tucked into the far reaches of a vast hotel, ridiculously difficult to find if you enter through the lobby. Yet there are culinary powerhouses behind this seemingly obscure spot. The proprietor, Pim Techamuanvivit, says she can cook every dish on the menu just as well as her kitchen staff but has no idea how to do so in a restaurant. So she brought on Michael Gaines—former sous-chef at Manresa, the legendary restaurant of David Kinch—to run the kitchen. Kin Khao is lively, crowded with happy customers who know they are getting some of the most complex and satisfying Thai food in America. All three curries I tried (green, massaman, sour) exploded from their bowls. Chicken wings, the favorite Thai food of Americans, are marinated, cooked to order, and still crisp when they arrive enveloped in a tamarind-Sriracha glaze. There's one dessert, black-rice pudding, served with three condiments: one sweet, one salty, one crunchy. Whichever you select will tell you more about yourself than your horoscope.

Photo: Melissa Hom

7. Shuko | N.Y.C.

Sushi innovated but not exaggerated

The subtle world of sushi evolves in profoundly tiny ways. At Shuko, the rice is a little less obvious, the fish a little more blissful, the toppings sometimes nonexistent, sometimes sensational. Raw scallop with yuzu salt seared my mouth, making me happy in a way no sushi has before. A friend and I had maitake-mushroom tempura over rice, a short time later spicy maitake mushrooms over tempura-like crispy rice. It was Japanese food that made me grin. Shuko is mostly about Nick Kim and Jimmy Lau, partners and alumni of New York's Masa empire, which means the sushi never slips into silly, so often the case when sushi bars innovate. Here's another sushi-bar rarity: charm. When I clumsily dropped my chopsticks, my friend groused, “Your chopstick skills are not good.” Kim overheard and chimed in, “Mine, neither.”

Photo: Jason Varney

8. Laurel | PHILADELPHIA

Bonjour, and welcome to...Philly?

The room might well be a shotgun apartment: front door leading to a tiny area (seating twenty) leading straight back to an undersized kitchen. There's not much decor, save for a few black iron sconces and hanging lamps. The chairs are exceedingly comfy, the service attentive, the stemware pleasing—all enhancements to a BYOB dining experience with a style of cooking I loved back when it was called “modern French.” Yet the most stunning dish was pure Americana, catfish in a coconut-clam broth. Hard to imagine a kitchen in Philly accomplishing what the South has been trying to do for centuries: make catfish elegant. Chef Nicholas Elmi does it gracefully. His meat dishes are intensely flavorful, particularly duck magret and foie gras. Stylishness has come to East Passyunk Avenue, once ground zero for cheesesteaks, now fast emerging as Philly's premier dining locale.

Photo: Dylan + Jeni

9. Alimento | L.A.

Somehow, Italian gets re-invented again

Chef Zach Pollack has turned Italian food inside out. His take on tortellini en brodo—in Italy, that's ring-shaped pasta in soup—actually puts the soup inside the pasta. (Particularly appealing to Shanghai-soup-dumpling lovers like me.) And that's just the start of the innovations at this tiny spot in the Silver Lake section of L.A. Pollack does a version of vitello tonnato with veal tongue instead of loin; cubes of escolar with eggplant puree, almonds, and toasted breadcrumbs; escarole that could pass for a vegetable terrine; and a triumphant yellowtail collar, with his version lightly smoked, then grilled, and finally glazed in a sweet-and-sour sauce. The vividness of his flavors is very Italian, as is the simplicity of the space: small tables, globe lights. There's one very telling old-Italian touch: The restaurant manager and the sous-chef live together on the second floor, directly above the joint.

Photo: Debora Smail

**10. **Killen's Barbecue | PEARLAND (HOUSTON), TX

Free beer. Heavenly ribs. Any questions?

I couldn't decide: Was Ronnie Killen's plate rib merely the single greatest piece of barbecue of my entire life, or was it the most magnificent piece of beef ever cooked at any time in history? The plate rib is the Mona Lisa of meat, resembling an abnormally thick slab of prime rib attached to a bone the size and shape of a broadsword. The meat tasted something like slow-cooked brisket, the fat within deliriously caramelized. Don't confuse this massive mound of meat with the more mortal but quite tasty chuck rib, served on a combo plate with two sides. (Pork-laced pinto beans and crunchy creamed corn are the undeniable choices.)

I used to worry that Texas barbecue was in decline, the great old pit masters long gone, but it's suddenly better than ever. The new guys are behaving like chefs, sourcing better products and doing more than just sitting in folding chairs by the smoker all day, drinking beer. Everything is first-rate at Killen's. Don't miss the bone-on pork belly—pile the meat on soft white bread and top with coleslaw. And come early, before the place opens, when the beer is free.

Photo: Johnny Autry

11. Lusca | ATLANTA

A new sea(food) monster from the south

Two huge murals depicting octopi dominate an otherwise plain oom—an homage from co-chefs Angus Brown and Nhan Le to the locally beloved Octopus Bar, where they became famous. They can't shake the attachment: The name Lusca refers to an imaginary octopus-like Caribbean sea monster. Fortunately, the whimsy doesn't carry over to the stunningly sophisticated cooking. Try the massive tortellini en brodo, and consider that this might be the year of tortellini. (See Alimento, above.) Stuffed with finely ground charcuterie trimmings and served in a reduced chicken broth, they're so rich you might wonder if you can handle more than one. Then order the pumpkin swordfish and the hand-torn potatoes—spuds are baked in a salt crust, cooled, dried, shredded, deep-fried, and topped with Parmesan and parsley. They deserve a wall painting of their own.

Photo: Winslow + CO.; Jody Horton

12. Dai Due | AUSTIN

Carnivores very, very welcome

Except for the name, which means “from the two” in Italian and is way too deep for me, Dai Due is easy to understand: You walk in, you're facing a butcher counter, you wisely order meat. The pork rib chop, routinely commercial elsewhere, comes out nearly black, deeply porky, and as satisfying as a beefsteak. The six-ounce sirloin tip, reserved for women on Tuesdays (a.k.a. ladies' steak night) is everything a thrifty fellow could want—treat your gal to a steak dinner for ten bucks. Much credit belongs to the wood-fired grill, where local

oak sends out tendrils of smoke that envelop everything, including the cooks. The wine is all Texas, a potential problem—but not the tasty Aglianico from Duchman Winery in Driftwood. The best starter is the cold-meat board, which isn't standard Italian-style cold cuts but all manner of country and Germanic provisions, including bierwurst, pork-jowl terrine, and sprouted rye. Never forget that it was German butchers who culinarily settled the American West.

Photo: Nolan Calisch

13. Ataula | PORTLAND, OR

Small plates that have big ambitions

Ataula calls itself a tapas bar, but don't expect standard small bites. Chef Jose Chesa's dishes are inventive, skilled, and gorgeously composed, starting with his chorizo lollipop. Rossejat is something like paella but made with tiny toasted noodles instead of rice, and his Catalan-custard-filled mini-xuixos taste uncannily like Cronuts.

Photo: Andrea Bricco

14. smoke.oil.salt. L.A.

Today's special: An extra helping of machismo

The food is sort of Spanish, but I've never come upon a Spanish chef who cooked with the intensity of Perfecto Rocher. Grilled spring onions with romesco-like sauce. Smoked, grilled octopus over vinegary potatoes. And chocolate-caramel rice pudding that's deep and devastating. The space conjures up a different name: loud.dark.cramped. But the food is certainly something else: savory.original.startling.

Photo: Gabrielle Plucknette

15. Santina N.Y.C.

Coastal Italian with a bit of a buzz

Carbone is satirical. Dirty French is retro. Santina, the newest restaurant from Major Food Group, led by Mario Carbone and Rich Torrisi, is giddy. Its extravagant chandeliers, bouncy music, exquisite cocktails, and multi-hued cannoli take you to an Italian island where the party never stops. The wines are irresistibly priced, the blue crab is artfully entwined with pasta, and the chickpea pancakes are the bar food of the century.

Photo: Erika Botfeld

16. Spice to Table | ATLANTA

Don't just call it an Indian buffet

Chef Asha Gomez is highly respected. Self-service food is not. Here they meet in an informal, expansive, serene Indian dining spot. Gomez's accents are brilliant: fruit salad with coriander vinaigrette, vegetable stew in coconut-milk broth. But the star of the self-service line is the Kerala Beef Cutlet: It looks like a burger, tastes like meat loaf, acts like a barbecue sandwich, and proves that ready-to-eat is now easy to admire.

Photo: Andrea Donadio

17. mfk. | CHICAGO

Spanish-style seafood served in serenity

MFK looks like the sort of neighborhood bar where Jony Ive would hang out: pale, composed, and seafood-oriented, with a wine list offering few reds. “We're more of a white-wine place,” the bartender said. The small kitchen turns out beautifully prepared food at a breakneck pace, so don't expect to linger. Try the meatballs—too juicy to resist—and hang in long enough to sample the buttery, classic, profoundly simple Basque cake, itself as pale as the walls.

Photo: Erica Wilkins

18. St. Philip Bakeshop | SUNSET VALLEY (AUSTIN), TX

Get lost in carbohydrate heaven

Here you'll find goodies galore, assuming you can find the place at all, located on an access road adjoining a major highway. (“We're in a really weird location,” the counter lady admitted.) The pastries are creative, compelling, and cost almost nothing: The bialy is warm and poufy, the flaky hand pie is stuffed with sausage and wild mushrooms, and the biscuit has mozzarella and bacon jam inside. Thank God for Google Maps.

Photo: Stuart Mullenberg

19. Kachka | PORTLAND, OR

At Kachka, dishes order YOU

Remember the Cold War? Maybe not. You were probably in elementary school. Well, it's back, as the backdrop of this delightfully dark spot. Laugh away international tensions with zakuski (Russian snacks) and sixty different vodkas. Try the Herring Under a Fur Coat, a kind of savory parfait salad, and Siberian pelmeni, which are like dumplings, but, well, Russian. Then toast Uncle Joe—Stalin, of course.

Photo: Courtesy of Ananda

20. Ananda | FULTON, MD

Indian food elevated to royalty

Plenty of Indian restaurants aspire to elegance, but few pull it off as Ananda does, with its working fireplaces, dark wood paneling, oversize tables, and massive windows. You'll also find faultless simplicity if you order the bengan khas. It's essentially Indian pizza, made by spreading eggplant, tomato, and yogurt over garlic naan. Crab Malabar, a celebrated Indian dish, has never been so subtle. Credit goes to the use of colossal lump crab, equally celebrated in these parts.

Trove is two restaurants and a bar under one roof, plus a semi-outdoor frozen-custard stand. (Even if it's raining, which it always is, don't skip the stand.) Trove's noodle section is so noodle-centric, I found some in my Mexican posole. The grill-it-yourself section had mostly chewy meats, surely because I cooked them. Even I couldn't make the Wagyu tri-tip tough.

23. Pink Zebra | SAN FRANCISCO

A kinder, gentler Asian-fusion joint

Seated at a table, I ordered clams with chorizo and tongue with persimmons. Fantastic. Then I requested nigiri à la carte. The response: No sushi for you. Pink Zebra is a cute place with an annoying rule: No omakase reservation, no sushi—even if the tiny counter is empty. I argued. I won. I loved every bite. And the rule has since been relad. I had overcome the sushi-Nazi policy of Pink Zebra, my culinary triumph of the year.

Photo: Courtesy of Lo Spiedo

24. Lo Spiedo | PHILADELPHIA

Courage under a fiery red sauce

Come here for a little history and a lot of meat. Lo Spiedo is located just inside the old navy yard, where the battleship New Jersey was built. Almost as sturdy is the reginette bolognese. “Too much meat,” I griped. “Marc Vetri knows what he's doing,” argued a friend. He always does. Here you'll find glorified Americanized Italian food, including a gutsy celery-root milanese sandwich. If vegetarians gave out medals, it deserves the Navy Cross.

**25. **Shi Hai | ALHAMBRA (L.A.), CA

_A rare bright spot in dim sum

Sadly, dim sum tends to be the same everywhere: unchanging versions of shu mai and har gow roll by on carts. Terrible tea. Indifferent service. Shi Hai is way better: attentive staff. Choice of teas. Six kinds of slippery rice-noodle rolls, including one stuffed with barbecued pork and corn. It's not a Great Leap Forward, just fantastic small steps.